it's a long fall (but at least we fall together)
by Lady StarFlower
Summary: "Love is painful, I agree. Many times it's not worth the risk. But it's like… riding a pegasus after you've walked all your life. It's exhilarating." In which, with the help of the Order of Heroes and a blue haired prince, Eir learns what love and life have to do with each other. Alfonse/Eir. Canon-compliant.


_This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. _

Rumi

O.O

Her dreams, as fitting a being of death, have always been of darkness.

Death is not usually a noisy happenstance. Most oftentimes it creeps upon people and takes them quickly and quietly, catching them in the middle of a shout, the middle of a swing. Death is sudden and silent, and thus menacing.

Her mother is such an embodiment. She commands the souls of the departed with little mercy, watching over the wailing dead with apathy as her translucent fingers rap on her scythe. And her eyes….her soulless eyes…

Love is not something one finds in the realm of the dead. Love is often a dagger driven in the bosoms of the dead, fueling them with anger and vengeful rage. The deeper the love, the sharper the pain. Regret is synonymous with affection in the land where second chances only come in the form of unnatural redemption.

"You have no need for love in this world, child." Hel tells her daughter soothingly, stroking her hair with the same translucent fingers that harvests souls. "When you become queen in my place, you will understand."

Eir stares down at the ash-grey soil, watching as the flowers surrounding her shiver and fall to the ground in a scattering of magic. The knife held to her throat waits.

"I will not love, Mother." She says into the empty air, and her mother sighs, holding her close to her bosom that doesn't beat. The knife strikes.

But that very night, Eir has the first dream. A dream of light.

She dreams of azure eyes, of golden locks blowing in a sun-drenched breeze, and she hears voices calling to her that aren't tinged with fear or hatred.

She wonders.

O.O

"Princess Eir? You look troubled."

She starts at the concerned voice that seems to come from all around her and whirls around, her hands darting to her knives, only to look right into the wide eyes of Prince Alfonse of Askr.

He holds up his hands quickly. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to startle you."

Eir feels her shoulders relax, though some of the tension stays with her like a lingering fog. "No…The fault is mine for being so skittish."

The prince lowers his head carefully. "I feel as if some of the fault lies with me. It is my duty to ensure that the Order of Heroes should treat you with respect. If you can't relax even in our castle…"

"Oh, no!" Eir's hands wring her sleeves with unconscious anxiety. "They've all been more kind to me than I deserve."

That was not strictly true, though. She's seen the way the older Heroes eye her, warily guiding the younger ones away from her general aura of foreboding. One of the healers, a pretty lass named Princess Elise of Nohr, even tried to ask her how she did her hair "So silky smooth!" before a tall knight on a horse hurried her away.

"Still, you are a part of our force now. You're quite the formidable fighter, saved us from quite a couple of scrapes." Alfonse's voice breaks through her memory and she looks back at him to see the prince smile at her kindly. "That means we're, at the very least, friends." He chuckles. "At least that's what Sharena would say."

Eir ducks her head low. Friends? Death honors no such bonds, and is often the cruelest severer of such sentimentality, and Hel often has calmly derided the title in no uncertain terms.

"Friends…" She says aloud, sighing. "I know very little of such connections, I'm sorry to admit. Death parts more often than it reunites, and even the reunions are hollow under my mother's rule."

Alfonse studies her with something akin to sympathy in his gaze. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Eir gives a little shrug, her hair skidding over her shoulders as she does so. "It's in the past now."

Alfonse nods. "Then…" He holds out his hand. "Would you do me the honor of becoming my friend?"

Her heart hammers in her chest. A flash of a long-ago dream crosses her mind's eye; a terrified wail of loss, a clasping of hands lifted in frantic prayer, of eyes drawn wide with unspeakable grief.

She blinks, and all she can see is Alfonse's kind, unknowing blue eyes, waiting for her answer.

Eir nods and puts her hand in his.

O.O

The next few weeks are nothing but a whirling pattern of relentless attacks and retreats against the troops of her mother's dead. The Order of Heroes are a hardy bunch, but even they falter against a deathless, painless army.

Of all the fighters in the motley of Heroes in Kiran's troops, Eir considers the healers the most incomprehensible. To wield life at the wave of a stave or the chanting of a prayer seems almost too much to believe. This power….it would make even her emotionless mother pale.

"We're not the most powerful, that is true." Lucius' kind voice is soft as he holds a golden staff over her lacerated arm. The magic smells of spring breezes, of flowers blowing in a gentle wind. "But our duty as healers is to care for the wellbeing of those who need it."

"But…" Eir bites her lip as she watches her pale skin close over the tender redness beneath, knitting together like a tapestry of flesh. "Death comes for all. It's inevitable to try to avoid it."

The monk breathes out slowly and opens his eyes. They shine with a wise innocence; a strange mix. "Death and life…on a battlefield we see more of the former. It would only be right to try to tip the balance in life's favor, would it not?"

Eir looks past Lucius to see the other healers moving about the room. Princess Sakura of Hoshido is anxiously working on her brother's back, Prince Takumi letting out yelps and a few choice swears as Sakura begs him to hold still. Odin is hovering anxiously by his daughter's side as Serra wraps up her ankles, Ophelia reassuring him that it is but a stumbling stone for the mighty heroine. Lady Deidre holds Lord Sigurd's hands worriedly as Princess Elise chants calmly over his shoulders, the blue-haired lord gritting his teeth as his bones meld together and his sinews rebind.

"Our army is an oddity as it holds familial bonds of all kinds." Lucius hands her a bottle of salve. "We go into battle knowing that death is inevitable, but we would do anything to protect those we love."

Eir lowers her head. "I thank you for your words." She stands. "I think I'm beginning to understand."

The monk nods, his smile soothing and reminiscent of summer. "Then may St. Elimine bless and keep you."

O.O

One day, Alfonse asks to see her knives, and she hands them over.

"These are beautiful." The prince marvels as he holds them up to the light. The orange glow of the fires roaring in the communal hearth wink and blink off the cross of her blades. "They look like a star from our skies."

"A star?" Eir tilts her head to one side. "The gaseous beings in the heavens?"

Alfonse laughs, almost embarrassed. The blades twinkle merrily with his movements. "Well, if you put it _that _way, it doesn't sounds quite as romantic."

Eir finds herself smiling, and lets it stay. There's something about this prince of Askr that brings out this warmer side of her, the part of her that craves the sun like a shadowed flower. He's so alive, so brimming with conviction that he seems to shine like the sun.

After a moment of weighing the blades further, Alfonse hands her back Lyfjaberg. "It's mesmerizing how you can throw these with such accuracy." He settles into a more comfortable spot next to her and she shivers at the closeness of his warmth. "We should train together sometime."

"What could I teach you?" Eir asks, tucking her daggers away. "Our styles are so dissimilar…"

"That's exactly it." Alfonse hoists Fólkvangr over his lap, running his fingers against the studded sheath. "It might grant us a different perspective. With so many different cultures and peoples in one place, it would never hurt to learn some new techniques."

Eir raises her head. "Ah, I see. How someone like that assassin Jaffar would train with a sweet mage like Nino."

Alfonse chuckles, his grin turning into a bit of a smirk. "Princess Eir, there are warriors who are dedicated to their training, and then there are those who possess ulterior motives of an entirely different sort."

The princess of death stares in bewilderment at the laughing prince of an over world, and is blinded by his smile.

It is only later, in the privacy of her bed, that she belatedly realizes what he meant, and feels a flush creeping over her pale face that defies the frost of winter.

O.O

She loves the gardens the most.

The black soil of the earth smell heady and pungent, and when no one is quite watching her Eir plunges her hand into the ground and revels in its soft sponginess.

And oh, the flowers! Sharena and Idunn have shown her how to cultivate her own plot, the latter much less exuberantly than the former. There are soft blossoms that bloom in colors Eir has never seen before, and they drip with sweet scents that nearly make her dizzy.

But sometimes, after dropping a pale brown nut into the soil and smoothing the soil over on top, Eir will gaze at the dark earth, willing and wishing for the flower to grow up healthy and strong.

"It's sad how short a life they lead." Eir says softly into the sleepy silence of the dawn, kneeling alone in the garden and not caring that her silvery black dress was dirtied by the soil.

"I doubt you are speaking of the flowers, daughter of Hel."

The voice comes from behind her, deep and stiff, and Eir scrambles to her feet, her hands flying to her Lyjaberg out of habit more than anything else.

King Gustav of Askr is standing on the pavilion in full dress with his battle-ax strapped to his back. His gaze is sharp and heavy, and his arms are crossed over his chest with an air of distrust.

"Your Majesty." Eir bows. Her feet tremble beneath her, and she is acutely aware of the dirt stains on her dress. "Please forgive my appearance, I did not expect to meet anyone at this hour."

Gustav chuckles acridly. "You underestimate the insomnia of a sovereign. I'm surprised, as you should already have an intimate history with such a figure."

Eir inclines her head. "My mother is not mortal. She does not sleep, nor does she grow weary. I have often opened my eyes after a night's slumber to see her awake, moving about her realm tirelessly."

The king raises a dark blue brow. "You are mortal, then." His voice is less wary and more quizzical. "I had always assumed that you were of the same nature as your mother."

"I can die." Eir's voice is very quiet. _Multiple times, many times, over and over…._ "If that is what you ask."

Gustav sighs, a tired sound so often heard from the mouths of rulers. "Princess, I mean no disrespect. In truth, I have regarded you unfairly ever since my children have taken you under our roof. I thought you were like Hel; ever ready to perform your inexorable deed, unflinching in your cruelty."

He looks at her garden; small, but crowded tightly with every color of the visible spectrum and tended with care and love.

"I see otherwise." The king smiles a little, but Eir sees a former brightness that must have shone brighter in a younger Gustav years ago. "My children were right to trust you."

Eir ducks her head, hot blood suffusing her cheeks.

"Get some rest, Princess." Gustav glances at the sliver of sun cresting the horizon, casting the world in a breathless light. "In my reign, I've found that sleeplessness can be more unforgiving than death."

She bows. The king returns the gesture with grave solemnity, and he turns and continues his quiet trek down the halls of Askr's castle, hands entwined behind his back as he disappears from view.

His shoulders seem bowed with knowledge.

O.O

Death is strange in Askr, as if the world itself doesn't take the concept seriously.

They all trust Kiran to ensure their safety in battles, the hooded tactician calling orders from above as the fighters follow through from below. But even Kiran isn't perfect, and sometimes a Hero would stagger and collapse to the ground, their forms dissipating like dust as their allies look on in horror.

But time and time again, when the team rushes home to the castle, they will find said fallen Hero anxiously awaiting their return, with an unhurt body and reassurance on their lips.

"It's black magic." Lord Ares of Nordion mutters as Princess Minerva of Macedon stares openly. But Prince Eliwood just surges forward and clutches Ninian to his chest with a choked sob, the manakete laughing shakily as she soothes him with a snow white hand.

Eir watches the couple embrace and finds herself longing.

She learns that love is a strange thing as well, often more painful than even death itself. Prince Julius' eyes tear jealous daggers into Lord Reinhardt's back every time the knight so much as looks at the Thunder Goddess Ishtar. Lord Hector of Ostia holds on to his daughter a little too tightly before she wriggles free to meet with Lord Roy, and the dancer Silvia quickly changes her expression of longing to one of rapt attention whenever Prince Lewyn of Silesse turns to speak to her.

Love, for all its niceties, doesn't seem worth all the pain that wracks one's heart to its core.

Princess Caeda's eyes widen when Eir voices this sentiment quietly in the tranquil lull of the pegasus stalls. "Oh, Princess Eir, you can't think that!"

She blinks. "Oh, was that too forward of me?" Eir feels herself shrinking into herself automatically. "I didn't mean to-"

The other girl shakes her head quickly, her blue eyes wide. "Oh, no, not at all!" Her smile is kind and genuine, and Eir relaxes under its effects.

Caeda reaches for a smaller brush. There's a faraway dreaminess in her eyes that Eir sees in dozens of other faces, and it's startling to her that she could recognize it in such a short span of time.

"Love is painful, I agree. Many times it's not worth the risk." The other princess muses as if to herself. "But it's like… riding a pegasus after you've walked all your life." Caeda smiles at her. "Do you remember flying with Lyfja for the first time?"

Eir strokes her steed's neck absently, the undead steed nudging into her hand soundlessly. "It was…" Her mind's eye sees black clouds and a red sun, and the sensations come flooding back. A smile breaks onto her face. "Exhilarating. I've never felt so free."

Caeda laughs, pleased. "So you do understand." The princess's eyes flutter closed, as if in blissful thought, and her arms spread wide as she twirls a little on her feet, brush clutched in hand. "You're in the air, with the possibility of a fatal plummet to the earth should you lose your balance.

"But you trust your pegasus to carry you swiftly and safely, and they trust you to guide it to where you need to go. And so, in the end…" She throws her arms up a little, sighing long and contentedly, "You fly, together."

Eir ponders this, turns it over in her head. "I see." She permits herself a small smile. "Thank you. You've cleared my misconceptions."

Caeda beams, and then lets out a startled laugh as her pegasus noses at her, whinnying impatiently. "It seems like she wants to fly." The princess turns to glance at Eir. "Would you like to go for a ride?"

Her hear lifting, Eir nods with unprecedented eagerness.

Only the foolish love, her mother used to say. But now, sitting astride Lyfja's back and watching Caeda wave gleefully at a faraway Marth on the ground, Eir ponders, and decides that love isn't as foolhardy as it once seemed.

O.O

She's no stranger to pain. Her mother had cut her throat, had slashed open her wrists, had once commanded Lif to lash her to death until she can't muster the energy to scream, only to awaken the next morning to do it all over again.

But to see it in someone else's eyes….that was a different kind of pain.

It happened one cloudy morning, in a border skirmish on the cliffs of Askr where the cold mists of dawn hide the daggers of thieves and the stabbing lances of agile fliers. It's a tense battle, and above them Kiran's voice is cracking with urgency as the Heroes dart in and out of a dance no one delights from.

Alfonse is holding his own admirably. His mouth is set in a grim line as he crosses blades with a towering Armored Knight twice his size, and behind him the fortune teller Micaiah is chanting spells with her arm outstretched, magic spilling from her slender form like water from a vessel.

"Princess Eir!" Lord Ike is holding aloft a kicking and screaming mage in the air, his shoulders bowed over with effort as he heaves the man towards her with a grunt. "He's yours!"

Eir lifts her daggers and sights down from Lyfa's neck. The mage scrambles to his feet, looking about wildly, and she almost feels sorry as she winds back her arm and throws-

"EIR!"

She hears Alfonse's scream just as the arrow skims past her neck, so close that she feels its barb draw blood. Eir yanks hard on Lyfja's reins, and throws her dagger with unforgiving accuracy.

With a gurgle, the mage falls. Eir ducks her head as another arrow whizzes over her head. She guides Lyfja to land on the creaky rope bridge, away from that archer, and awaits Kiran's orders.

Alfonse has overpowered his Armored Knight with astonishing speed. He yanks out his blade with uncharacteristic anger, and he's running towards her with such a terrified expression on his face that it makes her quickly dismount to confront him.

"Are you hurt?" The prince demands, dropping his sword to grab her shoulder, to run his hand anxiously over her shoulders and arms. "Oh gods, you're bleeding…"

"It's just a scratch." Eir smiles gently, putting her hand on his to soothe him like she would soothe Lyfja. "I'm alright, Alfonse."

Alfonse stares at her, his eyes shiny with agony, and suddenly Eir recognizes this expression so naked on his face. It's the expression that Lord Eliwood wore when Ninian fell from an enemy fafnir's blow, the same expression Lady Deidre had when Lord Sigurd collapsed from his horse with four daggers in his back.

The expression of nearly losing a loved one right before your eyes.

Any other day Eir would have staggered from such a reeling revelation, but here, riding the high of battle, her hand moves of its own accord to cup Alfonse's face with a tenderness that surprises even her.

"It's alright, Alfonse." She repeats. Her thumb traces away a suspicious wetness. "I'm right here."

Alfonse puts his hand on hers, and he exhales shakily, his body bowing until his forehead rests against hers. "Thank the gods." His whisper is just barely audible.

She doesn't sleep that night.

O.O

It's as if the gods noticed her heart unfurling to accept this new love, because just a scant few days later, she's plunged back into hell, her mother smiling softly at her as Alfonse chokes beside her.

Hel doesn't speak a word, but raises her hand in a calm, beckoning motion. Eir feels her feet move beneath her, like she's straddling some great oceanic wave that pulls swimmers from solid ground.

"Princess Eir?" Commander Anna's voice is sharp above Sharena's cries of terror, above Alfonse's harsh coughing. "What are you doing?"

Eir doesn't reply. She's drowning in her mother's lifeless eyes, the sweet smell of decay that accompanies her wherever she goes, the outstretched invitation waiting for her in her mother's hands.

"Come, Eir." Hel's voice is velvet soft, but there is steel beneath the silk. "Fulfill your duty."

"Princess Eir!" Anna sounds fiercer.

Eir's feet stay rooted to the ground, her hands clenched at her sides like vises around vises. Her heart is punching a hole in her chest, and the blades at her sides burn like brands.

"Child." Hel's voice has grown sharp. "Do you not hear me?"

Then, Alfonse calls weakly to her, thick with something deadly and horrified. "E-eir…"

Her chest clenches, and her eyes are burning. Eir fumbles for her knives, her Lyfjaberg, and takes comfort in the dual weight in her palms.

_A star from our skies…._

"Mother." Her voice trembles, but it carries in the carrion air of the underworld clearly enough. "I cannot stay here with you any longer."

"What are you saying?" Hel doesn't look angered or horrified, only faintly amused. "You can't possibly abandon your birthright for those in the sun? You'll wither within a matter of years."

A foreign emotion surges through her, and she later realizes it to be anger. "That's still more than the time you gave him." Sharena's sobbing intensifies.

"Nine days." Hel's face is unmoving. "I warned you about the overworld, girl. You are of a different ilk than they are; they will never accept you."

Eir shuts her eyes, and thinks of kinder faces, of Lucius the monk and Caeda the princess. She thinks of Alfonse, and the warmth he exudes so easily.

She _wants_ that.

"Even if they don't accept me…" Eir turns her blades towards her mother, her grip shaky but determined, "I understand why they fight now. It's love, Mother. And I know now that's something I can never find here with you anymore."

She doesn't realize what's overtaken her until she hears Sharena gasp. All she feels is fury and a despair that's the color of the death pouring from Alfonse's lips.

A single dagger, quivering as it stands embedded on its end in the dark soil, lays before Hel's feet. Behind her, the undead generals Lif and Thrasir have leapt to their feet, their weapons drawn.

_They look like a star from our skies…_

Hel's voice is unrecognizable when she speaks again. "You have truly lost, child."

"Princess Eir!"

Commander Anna is supporting Prince Alfonse with an effort, her red eyes wide with urgency. Sharena is holding up Alfonse's other side, her fingers twisting into her brother's cloak with an agony that cannot be spoken. Alfonse's breathing has turned shallow, his face sick and gray. But he's looking at her, waiting for her response.

They're waiting for her. They're not driving her away.

"They're my friends." Eir looks at her mother right in the eye, where her eye sockets glow with an eerie magic not of this world. "And you never were."

And with that, she holds up her hand, and the dagger at Hel's feet trembles and flies back to her palm. It snaps back into her hand with a satisfying _smack_. She relishes the sting, the astonishment on the Askrans, the incredulous and now-furious expressions of the undead.

"Let's go." Eir whistles to her pegasus, and touches Alfonse's shoulder with a careful hand. "Let him ride with me. I will make sure he does not fall."

Commander Anna is looking at her with new respect. Sharena is beaming at her through her tears.

And Alfonse smiles at her, a weak smile that ends in a grimace of pain, but a genuine one that makes warmth blossom through her chest like palace flowers.

"I knew you would stay." His voice is broken, but his gratitude seeps through every crack that Hel has wrought upon him. His hands wrap around her waist, tentatively as his head droops to her shoulder, and it feels like sunlight.

Below her, the battle rages as heroes from other worlds race to cover their retreat. The shrieking of metal is mingled with the cries of the dead and the living, rising like incense to the nose of a bloodthirsty battle god. Any other time, she will be worried about how her mother and the fury in those soulless eyes, about the punishment awaiting her in the future.

But here, atop the back of her deathless steed, above the cacophony, there is only her and this prince of light, holding onto her like she's a lifeline, _his_ lifeline. He's breathing hard against her neck, his gasps tainted with poisonous promise. But he's _here_.

"I will not let you die." Eir reassures him, her voice soothing and gentle. Her daggers glow, green like the glow of Lucius' stave. "Not this time. Not today."

Alfonse chuckles, his laugh thrumming against her neck like music. "I believe you."

They take off. She steers her steed towards the heavens, towards the portal that leads to home, where there's blue skies, colorful gardens and a tired king anxiously awaiting their return. There, she will look at the stars from Alfonse's window, and pray.

_Let me love. Let him live._

So maybe now, after everything, she understands just what Princess Caeda means.

_It's a long fall, but let us fall together_.

And she is grateful.


End file.
